The long-litigated hotel planned for the edge of the Pine Bush is finally rising off Washington Avenue Extension.

North Dakota-based Tharaldson Development Co. broke ground on the 106-room Residence Inn just west of Crossgates Mall in September, nearly three years after the company won a lengthy legal battle with environmental group Save the Pine Bush, which sued to block the development.

Save the Pine Bush appealed the case all the way to the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, arguing the city had failed to properly study the potential environmental impacts of the building on the environmentally sensitive Pine Bush habitat and several animals that call it home, including snakes, toads and the endangered Karner blue butterfly.

The case ended in a split decision of sorts, with the court ruling the city had done its environmental due diligence and that the hotel project could move forward but also finding that Save the Pine Bush had standing to sue in the first place, which was seen as a significant legal precedent for environmental groups throughout the state. The city contended that only neighbors of the property had legal standing to fight it in court.

Part of the deal to pave the way for the development included a $6,000 payment from the developer to The Nature Conservancy, followed by $2,500 annual payments for as long as a century to be used to benefit the Karner blue.

The hotel, initially planned as 124 rooms, is being built on about 3.6 acres of land at 124-128 Washington Avenue Extension. The parcel is next to but not part of the Pine Bush Preserve.

The plans have been in the works since 2002. Daniel Hershberg, an Albany engineer who has worked on the project, said the number of rooms was reduced because the project was in the pipeline for so long that Residence Inn's standards for space in common areas and elsewhere changed between the time it was first proposed and when construction began.